Soul's Edge
by jadesfire22
Summary: A poetic musing on Jaina Solo's psychological struggle after killing her brother in Invincible. After fighting her most masterful battle, Jaina confronts her subconscious despair. Rated K for sci-fi violence.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars. George Lucas...erm, Disney does. (Boy, does that feel weird to type.)**

**My description of Caedus as "impressionistic blackness" is a paraphrase of one of Karen Traviss' lines in the denouement of _Sacrifice_. **

**The line "Then the blade reached Caedus' heart, and he dropped at her feet, and Jaina felt nothing at all" is from Troy Denning's novel _Invincible_. **

**The line "Everything I tell you is a lie" is, of course, from the inimitable Matthew Stover in _Traitor_. (Inimitable...although, of course, my philosophical musings are, at least at some level, a poor imitation of his writing style.)**

**Just covering my bases here. **

**Anyway, read and review! (Hopefully positively, but constructive criticism is welcome too.)**

**Soul's Edge**

Jaina stood against her brother. His cloak pooled around him, making him a shadowy figure of impressionistic darkness, with no lines or even facial features to break the unanimity of his blackness. He had faded away from humanity, to become this seemingly impenetrable master of the dark side of the Force.

_How unlike myself_, Jaina mused. Although she buried her doubts and emotions, she knew that deep within, she, and her past, were as conflicted and fragile as a rare gem, shot through the heart with ruby streaks and deep sapphire fractures. Releasing herself to the Mandalorian battle-rage, she slashed and parried with preternatural intensity, not seeming to hold back an iota or take one jot of her concentration away from the fight of her life.

But, inside, one infinitesimal but furiously whirring part of her brain—or was it her brain at all?—absented itself from the fight. This entity within Jaina stood aside, passionately observing, and held back one vital technique.

The shatterpoint.

The skill she had seen Caedus perform with terrible ease, ruthlessly shattering _beskar_ in his invulnerability. The lost technique it took Jedi of the Old Republic lifetimes to learn.

The philosophy she had grasped, accomplished, and mastered on the first time she tried it. _That must mean something_, she considered.

Jaina, pushed by the hand of her twin, fell towards an abyss of fire. Averting herself with a huge Force effort, she slammed into a wall of white-hot metal, just missing death.

But for an instant, she had stared into the lethal flames. She defiantly met the gaze of the ever-changing fire, fluctuating along indefinable lines—_and she got it_. She grasped the shatterpoint of the situation.

She had navigated her doomed, unstable love affairs like she was making blind hyperspace jumps through an asteroid system. She thought these trivialities—as she saw them—had made her weaker, had led to her insecurities. She thought Mara's death had snapped her out of this petty dependence on romance. She wished the Force could wipe those years of foolishness, those years in which Jacen far surpassed her in power, from her memory.

But the Force never wastes an iota of life.

Observing the edges of her attentions shift like faults in an earthquake, she had balanced on the edge of conflict, and, slightly wounded, pulled herself out every time. For her whole life, she had been a collection of minor injuries. And then—she watched, winded, in the split second before pulling herself up, which seemed to last an eternity—had come the Vong Wars. One giant wound from which she had never recovered. Her feelings of insecurity, her internal conflict, her need to hide behind days and nights of grueling, self-imposed practice, as if she was sucking in her breath to prevent herself from falling apart. The Force had left her like some valuable vase, about to be pulverized by the casual telekinetic blow of a Jedi. Hanging on the edge of being and not-being. A pile of sharp-edged dust still retaining its shape in the moment before annihilation.

She knew that she had grasped shatterpoint so quickly because she _was_ a shatterpoint herself. And her deepest shatterpoint—she jumped and ran away from the fire, legs a blur of movement, heart and mind a frenzy of straining in the Force—was her capacity for love. Her love for Jacen.

Despite the years of Jedi training, her emotions left her balancing on an iceberg in a sea of floes, a sea of conflicting emotions, slipping apart and spiraling away. And in order not to fall into that glacial water from which there was no return, she grabbed on to her last resort.

And the shadow, dancing beside her against the curtain of the flames, saw her intention.

As one, they saw the shatterpoint of Jaina's love.

As one, they pushed on it with all the will the two could summon in the Force.

The lightsabers clashed, white-hot cores pushing each other up in hard, angled lines, coronas of red and purple meshing and almost flowing past each other, as if the essence of each would twist itself around to engulf the other.

_Tenel Ka—Allana—Jaina just as I long for them you love me the same the same and so you must not do this, you must let them live YOU MUST LET ME LIVE_

_Yes I loved Jacen but that is why you must die_

_I must live for them…for the galaxy, can't you see? Can't you see….ALLANA!_

_Traitor! You've killed, and killed, and killed again—how can you live? how can you live with yourself? you prove your inner conflict, you sought to destroy the shatterpoint but only succeeded in dooming yourself. My love for Jacen is the shatterpoint because it is what I must overcome. I only thank you for destroying it with me._

_But did we destroy the shatterpoint Jaina or the space around it? isn't your love in the conflicts themselves not the areas around them so your love only grows stronger in destruction only grows stronger in death the galaxy grows stronger in anarchy and endless death, death and danger, why can we not know peace?_

_BECAUSE YOU HAVE DESTROYED IT!_

With that, Jaina's hold on the iceberg of her consciousness broke, shattering into the frigid sea. She fell, and pulled her lightsaber back. And she struck with all her might.

Then the blade reached Caedus' heart—

_TENEL KA I LOVE YOU I'VE GOT TO SAVE YOU LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE—_

and he dropped at her feet—

_ALLANA! TENEL KA, MY LOVE! FLEE!_

and Jaina felt nothing at all.

For a while she did not see the headless corpse of what used to be her brother, used to be a breathing, thinking man. The blackness fell away like a funeral-shroud cremated, and a merely human specter of blood and humble horror replaced it. The soul of—him—the man who once stood there—had now fled, screaming his last plea, below the shadows. The shadows which had consumed him.

But Jaina Solo, Sword of the Jedi, saw neither corpse nor soul. She stared sightlessly ahead, irrevocable bloodstains streaked across her neck.

_It is said that on Dagobah Luke Skywalker was tested and trained under the tutelage of Yoda. He entered a dark side cave. There, descending among the muck and the gloom of the collective subconscious of the galaxy, he witnessed a vision of his father, Anakin Skywalker—Darth Vader. Fearing and hating the Dark Lord, Luke lit his saber, and the two did battle. _

_With a blow of the blue flame, Skywalker felled Vader. Yet, as the unmistakable helmet slowly, obscenely bounced along the murky ground, it burst open with a flash of pyrotechnics. _

_The head's one remaining eye_

_Blankly staring at the ceiling of ground. _

_The face inside_

_ Luke's own. _

Jaina, lost in a haze of indefinably smooth, shifting patterns, fought her own similar Force battle. As she sat in the unrecognizable metal environment, she falls, seeming around her to see a cavern.

She fights Jacen again and again.

The first time they clash, she seems to repeat the exact patterns of their previous duel, as if for the first time. And yet, in her head, she vaguely remembers a previous battle of the same sort, in another world, and she anticipates the path their duel will take.

Pure movement is their duel. None of the subtle Force-tricks, none of their half-reasoned, half-panicked discussion compressed into the space of a second. And Jaina performs like a droid, drifting through the gloom.

She cuts down her brother—

And the war begins again.

Endless rounds of blood, endless twists and surges of power, and over time, over many repetitions of a single idea, Jaina's perspective slowly begins to drift out of her body. She observes a difference in setting: the dueling pair is surrounded by crystal shards. It seems only by pure coincidence that they fail to touch, creating an infinitesimally tiny space for the warring twins. A space fraught with peril from the environment, not just from each other.

But they balance on the shards—impeccably—and duel.

Jaina notices that, in every repetition, although she had not noticed at first, the sequence and style of fighting vary slightly. Eventually, their final battle in no way resembles their original.

But—as it has always happened—Jaina kills Jacen.

Floating above the pair, she inhales, remembering a sadistic "training exercise" at Shadow Academy. Both twins were holographically disguised as the hated Darth Vader, without their knowledge.

And each rushed at the figure of an enemy, with worry for their twin in their hearts.

As she watches the duel, Jaina sees the echoes not only of her fatal, climactic war with Caedus, but of that ancient, almost-innocent fight engineered by trickery. And the faint echoes of every disagreement the two had ever had, which they had concealed, hidden under their Force bond and claims of kinship. And Jaina, watching just how early the disintegration of their love had truly started, is saddened.

_But, my dear, this only made you stronger. _

Jaina strikes down Jacen with a killing blow. Her soul turns to the unseen presence in the chamber as her body asks, "Who are you? And what do you mean?"

_I thought you lived, defined yourself, in conflict. Isn't that what you thought before?_

"Yes. Maybe."

_Ah!_ The voice was delighted. _Maintaining ambiguity, crossing and re-crossing boundaries, even still. I like that…._

"Why am I here?"

_Questioning existence is a futile task at best._

"Why am I here in this cavern?"

_It _is _your existence. As I said, questioning—_

"This—eternally slaying Caedus—is not my true existence. Not the one outside. This isn't real!" Jaina yelled, her sudden anger wrenching her out of the trance of movement and languid sorrow in which she had suddenly found herself.

_And who are you to define reality, Jaina Solo? Killing your brother may _be _your existence. In your mind—in the lowest levels of it, you have admitted as much to yourself—it is the action that gave you purpose. Sword of the Jedi!_

"I killed Caedus for the greater good. What do you think, I did it for some bizarre ritual of—self-actualization?" Jaina spat, half-sobbing. She straightened, and, with the old gleam in her eye, continued. "But I am not like this. I refuse to live this death again and again. So, you presence, show me what is reality. And you will. Get. Me. Back."

_An interesting philippic, Solo. As for the first part, I believe your brother would have had precisely the same excuse_

_THIS IS NOT AN EXCUSE! _Jaina's thoughts broke through, her emotions cutting through the unknown voice like a whirlwind through the cave—

_for killing you. Now, as for the second part of your question—for it was a question—how would you expect me to show you back to reality?_ The voice sounded chilly.

_I thought you said I could not define my own reality. _

Amusement. _Neither can I. Your reclaiming of the world, I think, Solo, will be a combined effort. Now listen well. You have heard the tale of the experience of Grand Master Skywalker in the cave? _Jaina nodded. _I thought so. In the cave of each being's soul there lies a similar heart of darkness. This is yours…Welcome to Soul's Edge. _

"I will escape this," Jaina said, and slipped into the ease of wordless speech. _I will not defeat Caedus only to be trapped in this nightmare by my own emotions! To succumb to my love and weakness!_

_ You used the shatterpoint of love to slay your brother. Why should it not work as well against yourself?_

"But…" Jaina silenced her words and thoughts as the voice continued.

_You see, Jaina Solo, you and your brother, as you have always known, possess the bond of twins. But this means more than that you can speak to one another at a distance, or that you can anticipate one another's actions. No, Solo, this means that as you kill your brother, you kill yourself. A shade of yourself perishes each time you strike your brother down in your heart. You see?_

Impassably, Jaina watched the duel, which had continued even while she addressed the voice. By now, it had become wild, unpredictable. Yet, in the rumbling of the fractured walls around her she sensed the end coming, and her anticipation was fulfilled. With chestnut hair swirling and a mad gleam in her eye, she bisected Jacen.

A scorching steam filled the room, and the walls around Jaina hissed with satisfaction. Out of the pile of black robes crumpled ignominiously on the floor—strange, there seemed to be no body inside, Jaina abstractly noted—a face arose. It was Jaina's.

In a voice similar to but entirely different than the voice to which Jaina had previously spoken, the hazy image of her own face, with no boundary to indicate where it ended and the room began, addressed her.

_Jaina…Jaina…._

_everything i tell you is the truth everything i tell you is a lie_

_he deserved to die if he wanted to help he should have just Made. Things. Easier._

_let me finish this so LIE DOWN and DIE ALREADY_

_can't he understand I'm doing him a favor?_

_i'm the only one who can finish him you're the only one who can do it _

_i am the trickster goddess living on conflict and edge gaining my power from the crossing _

_of boundaries i am exactly who the aliens see and define me to be—someone who cannot be defined on sight I AM YUN-HARLA_

_it's only a mando technique—_

_surrender yourself to the battle!_

_—to discard later _

_FIGHT! ACT! BE!_

_action and reaction is not evil_

_just like two subatomic particles colliding can they help that they excite other particles _

_charging a laser which destroys alderaan where millions of voices cried out in terror and _

_were suddenly silenced and how much have you silenced yourself jaina? how long have you silenced your true feelings how long have you silenced me?_

_jacen died in the war you know_

_Jedi Jacen Solo died in the Yuuzhan Vong Wars_

_at the hands of shapers and horrors in the grip of a malignant force_

_no, hollowed out by the darkness of his own soul _

_for there is no malignant Force, only the evil of one's self manifesting_

_STAND STILL AND DIE ALREADY_

_Is there evil in you, Jaina Solo? Is there evil in you?_

_caedus was the wickedness that crept into the shell of jacen solo_

_but what horrors may come back to creep into you when you leave your body behind like _

_the discarded living armor of a Vong_

_what, indeed, will inhabit you_

_everything i tell you, apprentice _

_is the truth (or is it)_

_but what about everything _

_you tell yourself?_

_so, now,_

_Sword,_

_is there evil _

_in you_

_?_

?

Jaina woke up, lying groggily on a hard, shiny surface. She didn't know whether she was waking up back into reality or that nightmare—

_That existence_, she corrected herself, as she found herself lying on a hard transparisteel shard. The voice was gone. Her image was gone. Her twin was gone.

Except for the fragments, she was utterly alone.

Walking a long time (she didn't know how long) she looked at the chiaroscuro of the room. How the pieces, large and small, threw light and darkness around the walls of—wherever the voice had said the place was. Jaina didn't quite remember.

A particularly massive, pointy fragment threw off an eerie blue crackle. Jaina glanced over and kept walking, exploring the caverns of her heart. Her form trailed off into the distance in a blur of abstract smoke, through which, nonetheless, the conflicting jagged lines of the crystals still showed.

Suddenly, Jaina heard a rumble. Through unseen gateways in the cave, at least seven spouts of water started filling in. Jaina felt the noise, saw the foam, and ran. Clambering up and up from fragment to fragment—there seemed to be no end to the height of the chamber. (Before the threat of the water, she honestly hadn't noticed its towering grandeur.) Ahead of and above her, she saw the glowing blue crystal she had formerly noticed.

Desperately, she leapt over to grasp at it. "Ow!" She had grabbed palm first onto a hard edge that seemingly extended straight all the way up and down the stalagmite. Gritting her teeth against the deep flesh wound, she attempted to ignore it as she started her ascent.

She looked down. The water advanced upon her, and the sides of her makeshift column were razor-smooth. Trying to accelerate, she only slipped down farther. And there was no Force here, Jaina saw. No enhanced speed to aid her climb.

The water—how murky and algae-filled it was! and at the same time how icy!—bit at her heel for a fraction of a second, lapping over it.

Jaina woke up next to the body of her brother.

Suddenly abandoned to themselves, the slivers of the cave began to crumble, falling into the ground. The last stalagmite, to which Jaina had so desperately clung, summoned its last burst of blue electricity more fiercely than ever, before toppling through the water into the soft ground. It looked for all the world like a sword slicing through flesh and into bone, before it disappeared into the current.

The blade—the Sword of the Jedi—disappeared into that deep expanse, glittering and throwing light out from under the water for just one brief second.

Then, like an X-wing descending into the swamps of Dagobah, it sank.


End file.
